Friday, July 18, 2014

A war is raging on Oahu. Months ago,
Honolulu mayor Kirk Caldwell declared a “war on homelessness.” “We cannot let
homelessness ruin our economy and take over our city,” he wrote. The mayor
picked his words very carefully. Caldwell has picked up on the rhetorical “war”
against an abstract problem reminiscent of another rhetorical war declared many
years ago.

Fifty years ago, in a State of the
Union address, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a War on Poverty. His
speech marked the beginning of a blitz of legislation designed to eradicate the
conditions that put Americans in dire economic straits. It led to the Head
Start program, Job Corps, the Upward Bound program, Medicare and Medicaid, and
food stamps.

Fifty years later we have Caldwell’s
war—and although the rhetoric is the same, there are vast differences. And that’s
too bad. A war on homelessness could further Johnson’s dream. Back in 1964, he
said that “Poverty is a national problem, requiring improved national
organization and support. But this attack, to be effective, must also be
organized at the State and local level and must be supported and directed by
State and local efforts.”

Surly Caldwell could have used the
fiftieth anniversary of Johnson’s declaration as to revive the optimism from 1964.
We could use this as an opportunity to work on eradicating the conditions that
result in homelessness, not just the homeless. It could be focused on working
closely with communities, mental health providers, and other factors that
contribute to the homeless population in Hawaii.

But that doesn’t seem to be
happening in Honolulu. The homeless are an eyesore. That’s what’s troubling the
mayor there. In an interview with the New
York Times, Caldwell defended these tactics.

He said that we “haven’t eliminated
the visual impact of homelessness.” Caldwell said that when tourists come to
Hawaii and stay in Waikiki, “they don’t want to see homeless people sleeping in
parks or on sidewalks or on the beach.”

It’s hard to argue against that. I’m
sure people who spend all that money to fly here and stay in a luxurious hotel
don’t want to see folks with no place to go sleeping on benches or in the park.
Public parks are closed at night and the police sweep through to make sure the
homeless aren’t near Waikiki.

The other sensitive spot is
Chinatown and Downtown. The City Council declared the area from Nuuanu Stream
to Ward Avenue to be “the center of Oahu’s art scene and is a hot spot for Oahu
nightlife, with live music and shows, as well as some of Hawaii’s most
contemporary restaurants and gathering spots.” In the last decade Chinatown has
become a gentrified hot spot with plenty of galleries, shops, and eateries.

After all, who wants to have to tip
toe around people trying to sleep in doorways or along the sidewalk on their
way to check out the latest restaurant or bar? First Fridays in Chinatown are
wildly popular and all those homeless people would just dampen the party
atmosphere. It might just make all those partygoers feel uncomfortable on their
way home.

So instead of lofty legislation designed
to study the issue and alleviate the causes contributing to homelessness, the
City Council is mulling over two bills punishing the homeless. One bill
criminalizes defecating and urinating in public. Ironically, it would also
criminalize peeing in pools or in the ocean. Watch out, kids. If you’re caught
peeing in the pool or trying to reenact the infamous Baby Ruth scene from
“Caddyshack,” you may be prosecuted, face a judge in the district court, and
could face up to thirty days in jail and a $1000 fine.

The other bill is even more
troubling. It would make sitting or lying on a public sidewalk a crime. Of
course, there were a number of exceptions that would allow people to watch
parades or standing in a line for “goods or services.” Nowhere in the bill or
in its legislative findings was the word “homeless,” but everyone knows the
true target of these bills.

On the other hand, these aren’t the
only efforts by the City. In addition to these controversial bills, the Council
authorized $47 million to set up low-cost housing. Moreover, the governor has
recently appointed a coordinator to work with the city government, the State,
and the private sector to get folks out of the elements and into a shelter or
some kind of housing.

In that sense, Caldwell’s war on
homelessness bears some resemblance to the old War on Poverty, but the new
tactics against the homeless themselves are an extreme. Johnson declared a war
on poverty, not the poor. Seems like these days we just want to sweep away
homeless people along with homelessness.

Friday, July 4, 2014

Two scoop rice, mac salad, and some meat like
teriyaki chicken, a hamburger patty covered in brown gravy, or pork adobo on
top of that little bed of shredded cabbage all within the confines of a square,
white styrofoam box. Sound familiar? You can pick up one of these plate lunches
on any island in just about any town.

The plate lunch is a quintessential local food in
the islands. It’s ubiquitous and anyone who grew up in Hawaii can recall a
favorite plate lunch spot. Maybe it was Sushiya’s on Prison Street in Lahaina,
or maybe your go-to spot was Kitada’s on Baldwin Avenue in Makawao. It’s not
just Maui either. Even the president has to get his fix at the Rainbow
Drive-Inn in Kapahulu.

The plate lunch is a statewide food tradition. You
can’t escape it. I’ve been around plate lunches for most of my life. The three
perfectly-shaped mounds of rice and mac salad doused in high-sodium shoyu are
part of growing up here. But where this food tradition came from is still a
culinary mystery.

Perhaps the most common theory is what I call the
plantation theory. It goes like this: in those allegedly halcyon days of
plantation labor when almost everyone worked in sugar cane or pineapple fields,
lived in substandard housing provided by big companies, folks found themselves
in a mix (and sometimes clash) of different cultures.

Out of this milieu came the plate lunch. One can
easily conjure up the sepia-toned image of Japanese, Portuguese, and Filipino
workers sitting down in the middle of a dirty cane field on their lunch breaks
sharing and mixing foods.

The theory makes sense. Most of local culture—pidgin
English and mixed ethnicities—came from the plantation. Why should food have a
different starting point?

And yet, the more I thought about it, there are
problems with this theory. Let’s not be fooled. Plantations were brutal and
terrible places for many people. Mixing culture was not encouraged. Workers
were separated by race in almost every respect. The Japanese could only
associate with the Japanese. Filipinos were also segregated. The Portuguese had
their own part of town. The white managers were at the top of the heap. The
thought that everyone would break free from these restrictions in the middle of
the day every day and sit down together to share each other’s food seems a
little hard to swallow.

And even if that was the case, why is the plate
lunch today so uniform? Not all plantations were the same throughout the
islands. Yet, the plate lunch is pretty much the same throughout the State.

Finally, there’s the mac salad problem. The
plantation theory doesn’t adequately explain how mac salad got into the mix.
What culture brought that over from Asia? Who’d bring that for lunch? Nobody
had a refrigerator in their plantation home or in the field. Would you eat mac
salad from a tin can that’s been on your back since five in the morning and
under the hot sun?

In the late 1980s, a new theory emerged. Writers at
the now defunct Honolulu Herald found anecdotal evidence that the plate lunch
got its start at Honolulu Harbor in the 1920s, not the anonymous cane field.

The Iwamoto family started selling foods, snacks,
and candies to dockworkers, stevedores, and even tourists from cruise ships on
the Honolulu waterfront in the 1920s from a rickety pushcart.

The cart became so popular that the Iwamotos rented space
on Channel Street near the waterfront with a small kitchen. By the 1930s, for
fifty cents, you got a paper plate with rice, a vegetable, kim chee and a main
dish like beef tomato, pigs feet, or chicken long rice. And yes, there was mac
salad.

This also explained how it became standardized throughout
the islands. If the plate lunch was popular in the busiest harbor in the
territory, it can easily catch on as workers stopped in Lahaina, Hilo, and
Lihue.

And yet, the plantation theory dies hard. Many food
writers think that the Japanese bento found on the plantation evolved into
these food stands on the waterfront and later lunch wagons.

No matter where it came from, the plate lunch tradition
isn’t going anywhere. For the record, my favorite plate lunch is the glorious
chicken katsu curry plate.

Maybe the first time mayonnaise from the mac salad
mixed with the curry on top of the chicken cutlet was at Honolulu Harbor. Or
maybe it came from a lunch wagon someplace. Then again, it could have started
on a nameless pineapple field in Wahiawa.

Frankly, I doubt we’ll ever find out definitely
where the plate lunch came from. But who cares? It’s fun to think about while recovering
from eating one on a hot summer afternoon.

Where’s the best place to ignore the biggest, most
anticipated, and most watched sporting event on the planet? The United States. It’s
obvious that the most popular game in the world is not popular here.

Soccer has managed to circle the globe and become the
preferred and popular sport in nearly every country on every continent, except
our own. For years, soccer has struggled in the United States. And right now
we’re in the middle of the biggest event the sport has to offer.

The World Cup is a soccer tournament held every four
years. The top national teams compete to determine the best soccer team on the
earth. Every four years—just like the Olympics—a different country hosts the
tourney. This time the host country is also one of the most fanatical soccer cultures
around: Brazil.

Soccer as we know it became popular in England and
Scotland in the nineteenth century. From there, it took over the world.
Wherever they went (and they went just about everywhere back then), soccer
followed. In most places, it stuck and soccer cultures developed. For example,
Brazilian and Argentinian futbol blossomed when Scottish and English engineers,
schoolteachers, merchants, and rail workers went to build the railways of South
America in the 1860s and ‘70s.

It didn’t catch on in the United States. Folks
played it early on, but it never took off like the way football, basketball,
and baseball became part of our sports culture.

But that still doesn’t explain Hawaii. The Hawaiian
Kingdom had many English and Scottish expats and visitors. Surely they brought
with them their love of the game. And yet, there’s no real evidence that soccer
came with them.

The rest of the Pacific doesn’t have much of a
soccer culture either. The Oceania Football Confederation includes national
teams from Tahiti, New Zealand, and Vanuatu is by far one of the weakest in the
world. No countries from this conference made it to the World Cup.

Then again, perhaps soccer was introduced early on
by the English and Scots in Hawaii. Perhaps they did play it. Maybe Honolulu
was the spot where the first soccer game in Hawaii was played.

No one really knows for sure. The earliest evidence
of organized teams date back to the early twentieth century, but by then there
were established teams with uniforms, organization, and a league. The Honolulu
Advertiser ran a story in 1905 about a fierce competition between “Kams and the
YWCA.” Apparently, Kams won 12 to 9—a shocking number of goals by any standard.

Photographs dating back to 1906 show a team of young
women and men at Oahu College posing in uniforms. (Oahu College eventually
became Punahou School). But this wasn’t just a game for private schools kids. In
2013, a historian out of Hilo discovered another fascinating photograph from
the same time period. It’s a postcard depicting a soccer team dressed in
all-white with small collared jerseys, shorts, and heavy boots of the early
twentieth century. Apparently, they were the team representing the Olaa Sugar
Company.

Olaa is gone now, but in its heyday, the plantation
town in Puna on the Big Island near what is now called Volcano. It was the
classic sugar plantation town. Strangely, no one in the photograph looked
Asian. They were all Portuguese, Spanish, or haole.

The game got more popular over time. By 1910, there
were established teams on the Big Island and Maui. By the 1920s, teams from
different sugar mills and from schools like Punahou and Kamehameha Schools
competed regularly.

It’s been here ever since. Folks gather to play on
fields nearly every day of the week all over the island. The folks who play
here come from all over the world. Out here in the middle of the Pacific you
can find a single game with players from just about every continent.

Maui, after all, is a great place to play soccer.
The weather is ideal year round and our public parks have something that many
other countries can’t offer the public. My Brazilian friend once told me how
lucky we are to live (and play the game) on Maui. Any patch of grass in Brazil,
he said, automatically is destroyed by kids playing soccer.

The only place where you can actually see the game
being played on grass is on television or in a stadium. Grass fields are just
not available for most of the public. In the images coming from Brazil, you can
see street kids playing in dirt lots or in the sand on the beach.

It really puts it in perspective. Perhaps it’s best
to keep soccer a secret after all.

Imagine having to report to a person
in an office every week. If you are late or forget, you could go to jail.
Imagine having to keep a job or go to school full time. If not, you could go to
jail or at the very least explain to a judge why you shouldn’t go to jail. If
you want to visit the mainland or even Oahu, you have to check in and get
permission from an officer of the court. If not, you could be considered an
absconder and may be arrested.

In some cases, you could get a curfew. If you’re out
after dark, you could get arrested. Perhaps you have to pay for an assessment
to see if you are a drug addict or an alcoholic. On top of that, you may have
to pay court fees and fines on a monthly rate for four years or until it’s all
paid up. These are the most basic conditions of probation.

This paper duly reports on the fates
of criminal defendants. These pages feature colorful quotations from judges,
prosecutors, defense lawyers, and sometimes the defendants themselves
sensationalize the event of a sentencing hearing. Details about the offense are
described. Sometimes it seems innocuous. Other times it could be horrifying.

But no matter what the offense is, the end is always
the same: the judge issues his or her sentence. Sometimes it’s prison. A
defendant is carted away by the sheriffs.

And then there’s probation. I’m always struck by the letters of outrage to the
sentencing judges that order a person to be put on probation instead of prison.
One thing the paper never really discusses is probation. What exactly is it? Is
it hard? Why is it such a common disposition in a criminal case—even when there
are crimes of violence?

Here are the basics. Probation is an
alternative to prison. Instead of going off to places like Halawa prison on
Oahu or private facilities in Arizona, the probationer stays right here and out
of custody. Rather than being under surveillance and guarded twenty-four hours
a day with the State footing the bill for housing, meals, and medical services,
the burden shifts to the probationer to find a clean and decent place to live,
get a job, and become a productive member of the community.

The only real catch is that the court orders a list
of conditions by which the defendant is required to abide. The most common condition is checking in
with a probation officer. These officers work for the judiciary and keep track
of the probationer’s progress. If the court orders complete sobriety and drug
testing, it’s the probation officer’s job to do that. Probationers are required
to keep a job or go to school full time. Most importantly, they are not allowed
to pick up another conviction.

If a probationer violates the terms,
his probationary status could be revoked and the judge would sentence him or
her all over again. In some cases, he could get probation all over again and
the actual sentence could even be longer than a prison sentence.

So why do people get so upset when a
person is sentenced to probation? Why is there such a vehement demand for
prison? Prison is a very hard on the defendant. Prison rips a person out of the
community and family life. The prisoner is left in isolation where he or she
acquires no skills, formal education, or training. It doesn’t encourage anyone
to do anything but wait for the term to end.

It’s costly for the community too,
but stats are hard to come by. Each state has a different bill to house
prisoners. Alabama, for example, spends something like $17,285 a year for a
single inmate. New York City, on the other hand, spends a whopping $168,000. Hawaii
is in the middle. The State Attorney General reported that in 2009, it cost
$118 a day for a single inmate, which comes to about $43,000 a year.

Probation—without guards, meals, shelter, and medical
services—is certainly cheaper. On top of that, the probationer is required to
be productive. They have to keep jobs and probation officers almost always
require pay stubs as proof of employment. They have to pay off fines and any
restitution.

Seems like a win-win situation for society and the
probationer. And yet, we still demand prison for folks who’ve been sentenced. Granted,
punishment is always a factor to consider at sentencing, but it’s not the only one.
It should never be the main reason to sentence somebody. There will always be
those who wish to indulge in the need to severely punish offenders. But prison
isn’t a solution for most folks. We just can’t afford it.